


Breaking Down

by johnwatso



Series: Ceremonials [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, F/M, M/M, Pining, Set during S3, no happy ending (yet)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 09:56:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2464097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnwatso/pseuds/johnwatso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock arrived at 221B and looked around, uncertain about what to do with himself, his hands, the clenching of his heart. He checked his phone for the fifth time since leaving the wedding - no new messages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking Down

**Author's Note:**

> All alone  
> On the edge of sleep  
> My old familiar friend  
> Comes and lies down next to me
> 
> And I can see it coming from the edge of the room  
> Smiling in the streetlight  
> Even with my eyes shut tight  
> I still see it coming now
> 
> Oh, I think I'm breaking down again
> 
> Florence + the Machine, "[Breaking Down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXWYOF0UhCk)"

Sherlock arrived at 221B and looked around, uncertain about what to do with himself, his hands, the clenching of his heart. He checked his phone for the fifth time since leaving the wedding - no new messages. Bed seemed like a good option.

Two hours later, still restless and buzzing, Sherlock finally kicked the blankets off his body and admitted defeat. His mind wouldn’t stop replaying images of Mary and John saying their vows, Mary and John dancing close together, Mary and John smiling at each other, Mary and John.

Somewhere deep inside, Sherlock felt like he didn’t deserve peace. Since he was a child, happiness was always followed by the inevitable breakdown. As a preteen, he would deal with it by isolating himself in his room, not even allowing Mummy’s comfort. Later, as a teenager and young adult, he used drugs to squash the dull, thumping misery. In recent years, it had been cases and deductions. And John. 

Even when he was after Moriarty’s network for two years, he kept the melancholy at bay by telling himself, like a mantra, that he was coming home one day. Coming home to Baker Street. And cases. And deductions. And John. He hadn’t known it in its entirety yet, but he took that fact for granted, thought that John would always be there, that it could be how it was before. He hadn’t even known the extent of his love for his friend, couldn’t have known that it wasn’t precisely platonic until he saw him promise his life to another woman. God, how it had stung. He made it through his best man’s speech by being honest, by outwardly declaring his love for the most deserving man he had ever known.

It was hardly his fault that, in the process, he brought to the fore of his mind the extent of the love he felt for this man. For one glorious, revealing moment, when he admitted it all to himself, when his subconscious, intense desire was made conscious to him, he felt relief. This is what he had been trying to figure out, all this time, for all those years. This is the truth. _This is it_. In the next moment, he was brought back to reality. The truth won’t set you free. Not when you can only admit it to yourself. Not when the person you love like no other human being on earth can’t even know how you feel. 

The soul-crushing realisation - John had _chosen_ Mary - was too great to bear. He put on a brave front, solved the case, watched John save the life and performed his duties on auto-pilot. It hurt to play the song he had composed for them, it hurt to tell them about the baby, it hurt to see them dancing and it really fucking hurt to see John make a joke about their dancing lessons, something he secretly treasured. Being allowed to hold John close, in the privacy of 221B, to smell his hair, to finally wrap his arms around him. He hadn’t known it then, but he needed to collect those moments, to savour them.

He left the wedding early, but he was sure that nobody noticed, or even minded, a fact that was confirmed by the lack of messages. This wasn’t a mindless romantic comedy with a predictable plot and a loveable hero - he was not and never had been a hero, much less a loveable one. John wasn’t going to run out after him and declare his love. John wasn’t going to follow him to the airport or kiss him in the rain or run his fingers down his cheekbones while they were bathed in early morning light. Sherlock didn’t deserve any of that anyway, a fact that was confirmed by the monster that followed him throughout his whole life, the darkness that never yielded or abated. 

Sherlock switched on his bedside lamp. His skin was buzzing and his heart was thumping in anticipation for his almost-decision. He thought about it once more - what this would mean for his sobriety - and decided the need outweighed the costs. He pulled a little box out from under the floorboard beneath his bedside table and opened it. His supply was small, but it would be enough, especially since he had been clean for all those years. All it took was one injection and his heart didn’t feel quite so strangled. He was finally able to breathe. In, out, in, out. The pain didn’t leave, but it was as though he could take it out of himself and look at it; analyse it without the claustrophobic heartache getting in his way. Soon enough, he was able to relax and think about his life from an outside perspective. Logically speaking, he shouldn’t feel this miserable. The darkness shouldn’t close in on him anymore. Everything he ever hoped for he had achieved - plus more. He was allowed to put his brain to use. He even had friends. Why did everything feel so empty, then?

If he was a religious man, Sherlock would have wondered at his sin - the temptations he gave into, even now - and begged forgiveness. Anything to find peace, anything to fill the omnipresent void in his heart. Sherlock scoffed at that, the idea that he had a heart - ‘ _I’ve been reliably informed that I don’t have one._ ’ ‘ _But we both know that's not quite true._ ’

Perhaps he should have taken Jim Moriarty up on his offer to burn it out of him; his heart, that is. In a way, he’d already done that, had already taken the only thing that mattered away from him, even in death, but he still had a heart, unfortunately, and it still had the power to make him abandon his will power. All those ‘danger nights’ that Mycroft and John had been vigilant during - how ironic that now, the most dangerous night of them all, apparently, neither of them had the presence of mind to realise.

Without thinking, he swung out of bed and walked up to John’s room - it would always be John’s room to him. Luckily, John had stayed in the room a week prior, after a dead-end lead had them out most of the night. He remade the bed, but it still smelled like him, a smell he had missed after returning from the dead. Sherlock lay down on John’s side - the left, always the left - and curled up into a ball. He sniffed the pillow and drifted in and out of consciousness. Every time he felt as though he was going to fall asleep, he would jolt awake, caught in that horrible maze where you’re trying to find your way to oblivion and nothing will come.

 _This is it_ , he thought as he inhaled the scent of John one last time before oblivion finally, finally overcame him as the sun began to filter in through the curtains.


End file.
